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Mostrando postagens com marcador Ucrania. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador Ucrania. Mostrar todas as postagens

domingo, 10 de março de 2024

Los planes que tiene Putin para Ucrania, en un mapa: un paisito con Kiev como capital - Martin Idafe (Clarin)

Los planes que tiene Putin para Ucrania, en un mapa: un paisito con Kiev como capital

 

Territorio ucraniano

UCRANIA POSTGUERRA

Anexado por Rusia

Anexado por Polonia

Anexado por Hungría

Anexado por Rumania


El presidente ruso Vladimir Putin justificó hace dos años el ataque militar de su país a Ucrania diciendo que sus vecinos preparaban una agresión armada contra Rusia y negó al inicio de la guerra que Moscú tuviera tentaciones expansionistas. Se limitaba a decir, al principio del ataque, que su país exigía cosas como una supuesta “desnazificación” de Ucrania, un país con un presidente judío y nieto de judíos que lucharon contra los nazis en la Segunda Guerra Mundial y en el que la presencia parlamentaria de la extrema derecha es de las menores de Europa.

La diplomacia occidental y sobre todo los gobiernos de Europa del Este siempre han corregido a Putin para decir que lo que busca el autócrata del Kremlin es expandir Rusia para que ocupe las partes de Europa oriental que un día ocuparon la Rusia zarista o la Unión Soviética. Acusan así a Moscú de buscar la desaparición de Ucrania y más cambios en las fronteras, lo que daría paso a años de inestabilidad y guerras, incluyendo un conflicto con la OTAN.

domingo, 21 de setembro de 2014

Tres ideas equivocadas: Putin-Russia, Obama-USA; China-potencia mundial - Moises Naim

Putin é um autocrata ao estilo dos seus predecessores czaristas; vai falhar, como eles falharam, em criar instituições sólidas, pois que pretende que elas sejam baseadas em sua vontade exclusiva. Ademais, a Rússia é um gigante com pés de barro, ou seja, um grande país, com enormes recursos naturais, mas com instituições frágeis, que não permitem que o país se integre naturalmente, e beneficamente, com o seu contexto regional, que deveria ser a Europa ocidental e toda a Ásia central. Como império, vai falhar, como já dizia Renouvin.

Obama, obviamente, é um perfeito social-democrata num país que preza muito mais o empreendedorismo individual, e tem reações isolacionistas reiteradas, em meio a impulsos para corrigir o que acha errado no mundo, mas que sente que podem colocar em perigo seu modo de vida. Idealismo tipicamente americano, que de toda forma deixaria o mundo melhor, se não existissem obstáculos formidáveis nesse mundo, justamente aqueles que derivam de autocratas como Putin, Xi Jin-ping e outros ditadores ordinários e vagabundos em outras paragens.

Finalmente, a China, de fato uma enorme potência econômica, mas que precisa de um Big Brother para conter os impulsos internos, anárquicos, de uma população que foi secularmente oprimida pelos mandarins, antes imperiais, hoje do Partido Comunista. Como sempre acontece em sua história, as dinastias duram enquanto o poder central for capaz de controlar o povo, com a ajuda de mandarins eficientes. Depois, estes se tornam corruptos, e alguém derruba o imperador para colocar outro em seu lugar. O imperador hoje é o Partido Comunista, com seus novos mandarins, tão corruptos quanto os das dinastias imperiais. Isso um dia acaba...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

EL OBSERVADOR GLOBAL

Tres ideas equivocadas

Turbulencia geopolíticas, crisis económicas y convulsiones sociales no dan tiempo de pensar


En estos días es fácil equivocarse. La turbulencia geopolítica, las crisis económicas y las convulsiones sociales se suceden a tal velocidad que no da tiempo de pensar con calma y calibrar bien lo que está sucediendo en el mundo.
En este ambiente tan revuelto, algunas ideas han arraigado tanto entre expertos como en la opinión pública internacional. A pesar de su popularidad, varias de ellas están equivocadas. Por ejemplo, estas tres:
1. Vladímir Putin es el líder más poderoso del mundo. Por ahora. ¿Pero cuán duradero es el enorme poder que hoy concentra? No mucho. La economía rusa, que no iba bien desde antes del conflicto con Ucrania, se ha debilitado aún más debido a las severas sanciones impuestas por Estados Unidos y Europa. El valor del rublo ha caído a su mínimo histórico, la fuga de capitales es enorme (74.000 millones de dólares tan solo en el primer semestre), la inversión se ha detenido y la actividad económica se contrajo. El Kremlin ha debido echar mano de los fondos de pensiones para mantener a flote grandes empresas cuyas finanzas han colapsado al perder acceso a los mercados financieros internacionales. La producción de petróleo ha disminuido y las nuevas inversiones de las que depende la producción futura se han parado. Por otro lado, el machismo bélico de Putin le ha dado nueva vida y mayor protagonismo a una organización que él detesta y que estaba en vías de extinción: la OTAN. Y esta semana se confirmó el fracaso de Putin en detener el acercamiento de Ucrania a la Unión Europea, después de que el Parlamento de Kiev y la Eurocámara ratificaran un acuerdo de asociación. Putin seguirá siendo un líder importante y sus actuaciones tendrán consecuencias mundiales. Después de todo, preside autocráticamente uno de los países más grandes del mundo y su nacionalismo lo ha hecho muy popular entre los rusos. Pero su estrategia económica, sus relaciones internacionales y su política doméstica son insostenibles.
2. Obama fracasó. La popularidad de Obama es la mitad de la de Putin. La renuencia del presidente norteamericano a intervenir militarmente, de manera mucho más agresiva, en Siria, Ucrania o contra el Estado Islámico le ha valido severas críticas. Su fracaso a la hora de lograr el apoyo del Congreso para aprobar leyes indispensables ha expandido la idea de que Obama es un novato que no sabe manejar el poder o que EE UU ya no es una superpotencia, o no sabe actuar como tal.
Esta afirmación se debe a que se tiende a sobreestimar el poder de EE UU. Y a la creencia de que basta con que la Casa Blanca decida intervenir para que los problemas se arreglen o se mitiguen. Esto nunca fue cierto, aunque antes el presidente norteamericano gozaba de un mayor grado de libertad que ahora. Pero el mundo ha cambiado, y el poder ya no es lo que era. Incluso el presidente de EE UU tiene menos poder que el que tenían sus predecesores. Desde esta perspectiva, Obama se ha manejado mucho mejor de lo que le conceden quienes creen que su cargo confiere poderes casi sobrehumanos.
3. China es la próxima superpotencia del planeta. Es inevitable que dentro de unos años China tenga la economía más grande del mundo. Sus fuerzas armadas también están creciendo rápidamente, así como su protagonismo internacional. Su influencia en África, América Latina y sus vecinos asiáticos es indudable. La capacidad del Gobierno chino para construir grandes infraestructuras es también incuestionable y su éxito económico y social es fenomenal. Esto hace que muchos supongan que China será la nueva potencia hegemónica del siglo XXI. Yo no lo creo. Sabemos que existen dos Chinas: una industrializada, moderna, la de los rascacielos, la globalización y gran dinamismo económico. Pero también sabemos que hay una China muy pobre y con enormes necesidades insatisfechas de vivienda, salud, educación, agua, electricidad, etc. El ingreso del 48% de la población que vive en esta China más pobre y rural es un tercio de lo que ganan sus compatriotas en las ciudades. Sorprende, además, que, a pesar de sus éxitos, el Gobierno muestre gran inseguridad. Gasta más en seguridad interna que en defensa externa, por ejemplo. Un tercio del territorio chino, Tíbet y Xinjiang, vive en una crónica ebullición política a la que Pekín responde con fuerte represión y permanente intervención militar. Y los esfuerzos gubernamentales por controlar la información, censurar Internet y limitar el intercambio de ideas son legendarios. Este ambiente inhibe la innovación, ingrediente indispensable para que un país tenga éxito.
Es obvio que China tendrá cada vez más peso en la economía y la política del mundo. Pero no será la potencia dominante.
En el siglo XXI ningún país podrá desempeñar ese papel.

Sígueme en Twitter en @moisesnaim

segunda-feira, 28 de julho de 2014

Ucrania-Putin: europeus continuam hesitantes em face do novo czar desafiador - Der Spiegel

THE WAKE-UP CALL

Europe Toughens Stance against Putin

It took the shooting down of a Boeing jet carrying almost 300 people before the EU agreed on the first true economic sanctions against Russia. The Americans want further action, but it is impossible to know if punitive measures can sway Vladimir Putin.

STOPPING PUTIN

The Time Has Come for Europe to Act

Vladimir Putin has ignored Western demands that he cease arming and supporting pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine. As such, he shares responsibility for the shooting down of MH17. It is now time for Europe to take tough action.

quarta-feira, 19 de março de 2014

A Russia ameaca a seguranca e a estabilidade da Europa? Editorial Washington Post

The Post’s View

Obama doesn’t grasp Putin’s Eurasian ambitions

IT’S EASY to conclude that Vladi­mir Putin’s passionate defense of Russia’s takeover of Crimea “just didn’t jibe with reality,” as Secretary of State John F. Kerry put it. In a speech on Tuesday, the Russian ruler repeated mendacious charges that the Ukrainian government had been hijacked by “nationalists, neo-Nazis, Russophobes and anti-Semites”; voiced his paranoid conspiracy theory about supposed Western sponsorship of popular revolutions, including the Arab Spring; and brazenly compared Russia’s abrupt annexation of Ukraine with the reunification of Germany.
It’s necessary, however, to take some of what Mr. Putin said seriously, because of the implicit threat it poses to European and global security. Mr. Putin advanced a radical and dangerous argument: that the collapse of the Soviet Union left “the Russian nation” as “one of the biggest, if not the biggest ethnic group in the world to be divided by borders.” That, he suggested, gave Moscow the right to intervene in Crimea, and, by extension, anywhere it considers ethnic Russians or their culture to be threatened.
Mr. Putin’s doctrine would justify Russian meddling not just in other parts of Ukraine — he claimed that “large sections of the historical south of Russia” now “form the southeast of Ukraine” — but also in other former Soviet republics with substantial populations of ethnic Russians.
Western officials seem to be betting that Mr. Putin won’t dare to extend his aggression beyond Crimea. But then, just last week they were saying they did not expect Moscow to move quickly on Crimean annexation. The Obama administration and its European allies have been too slow to grasp that Mr. Putin is bent on upending the post-Cold War order in Europe and reversing Russia’s loss of dominion over Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Worse, some in and outside of Western governments may be feeding Mr. Putin’s imperialism by rushing to concede “Russian interests” in Eurasia. President Obama and Mr. Kerry are among those who have said they recognize such “interests” in Ukraine. But the fact that there are ethnic Russians in a country should not give Mr. Putin’s regime a privileged say in its affairs. The idea that areas populated by Russians must be ruled or protected by Moscow is less the ideology of the 19th century, as Mr. Kerry would have it, than of the 1930s.
Mr. Putin’s claim that Russia should have a say in the political orientation of its neighbors, and whether they join alliances such as the European Union or NATO, is equally unacceptable. (Mr. Kerry recently renounced, gratuitously, any such U.S. claim on Latin American states, several of which have close military ties with Russia.) Perversely, some in the West are echoing Mr. Putin’s argument that his aggression is an understandable response to Western encouragement of the former Soviet Bloc states that embraced democracy and free markets and sought NATO and European Union membership.
The two countries that Mr. Putin has invaded since 2008, Ukraine and Georgia, were rejected for NATO membership action plans that year. Can it be argued seriously that Estonia and Latvia, with their large Russian minorities, now would be less vulnerable to Russian aggression had they had not joined NATO? The crisis in Europe has come about not because Western institutions expanded, but because they did not fulfill their post-Cold War promise of “a Europe whole and free.”

sexta-feira, 14 de março de 2014

Ucrania-Russia: a razao do mais forte, nem sempre a melhor...


Russia: Russia reiterated that it reserves the right to intervene in Ukraine. The Russian foreign minister released a statement saying that Ukrainian authorities are unable to provide basic security after one person died in clashes between pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian activists.
Foreign Policy, March 14, 2014

Curioso mesmo: ocorreu UMA morte numa cidade da Ucrânia oriental, e o morto era um ativista pró-ucraniano, não pró-russo.
A segurança básica seria para quem mesmo?
E se morrer um pró-russo na Crimeia? A Rússia vai intervir, para garantir a segurança?
Aliás, precisa?
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 





sábado, 8 de março de 2014

Ucrania: a Europa retraida, e reticente - Jeffrey Laurenti

Seeking An Exit From the Ukrainian Cul-de-Sac

Jeffrey Laurenti 

The Huffington Post, World, Updated: 


German chancellor Angela Merkel came away from a phone conversation with Russian president Vladmir Putin this week convinced that he is living "in another world," she told Barack Obama -- an Orwellian alternative universe, perhaps, in which freedom is slavery and lies are propagated by a Ministry of Truth. The political crisis that is consuming Ukraine has re-ignited the embers of cold war hostility and paranoia.
Yet as the West and Russia square off, Merkel has been reluctant to sanction and isolate Russia for destabilizing Ukraine. This only reinforces Washington hardliners' disdain for Europe's supposed ineffectuality: it was the European Union's trade initiative that Putin torpedoed, triggering the Ukrainian upheaval -- and now the E.U. expects the Americans to deal with Russia's hardball reaction?
Europhile Henry Kissinger caustically blames E.U. "bureaucratic dilatoriness" for "turning a negotiation into a crisis." The last disciple of Metternichian realpolitik, Kissinger at least recognizes the perils of reacting intemperately and urges a compromise with Moscow involving "Finlandization" of Ukraine. But his fellow Republicans have seized on Ukraine to launch a full-throated assault on Obama as a "weak indecisive leader" whose "feckless foreign policy" invited Russian aggression and who lacks the backbone to force Putin into ignominious retreat.
If cold-war reflexes still come quickly to life in conservative quarters in Washington, they are far more deeply ingrained in Russia. Putin famously told the Duma that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was "the greatest geopolitical disaster of the last century." NATO's expansion eastward and its war with Serbia over Kosovo propelled his ascension to power in 1999, and what he sees through the Moscow looking-glass is an implacable Western drive to hem in Russia and impose Western economic and political models worldwide.
Russian rhetoric about Ukraine bitterly parodies the language of current Western internationalism. Russian military forces are undertaking a "humanitarian intervention," just as the Western countries did in Libya and have proposed for Syria (though in Ukraine no one has been killed or remotely threatened by the current Kiev authorities).
The Crimean autonomous region has the right to secede from Ukraine, just as the Western countries asserted for Kosovo (juridically an uncomfortably snug parallel, though missing the small detail of internationally certified lethal repression by Belgrade).
Ejection of sitting government officials from their posts by militant protesters in Russified districts of Ukraine is an expression of the popular will, a just riposte to the "Euro-Maidan" protesters who finally forced the flight of president Viktor Yanukovych.
Sergey Aksyonov, whose fervently Russian party won four percent of Crimeans' votes in regional elections, could then be legitimately installed as the region's leader, while it was illegitimate for the national parliament, including Yanukovych's own party members, to appoint Oleksandr Turchynov, whose Fatherland party had garnered 26 percent of Ukrainians' votes for the Rada in 2012, to fill the purportedly vacant presidency.
All this pretended symmetry is simply pretextual. The bottom line is that Putin deemed even a modest European link for Ukraine as a serious threat to Russia, perhaps a first step toward NATO. He gambled that he could prevent it.
The gamble backfired badly, mobilizing legions of protesters and knocking Yanukovych, who had walked a fine line between Ukrainians' European aspirations and Russian sympathies, off balance and finally out of power. While Obama does not see "some cold war chessboard," Moscow concluded it had just lost its queen, and riskily upped the ante.
The confrontation, however, actually poses more danger to Putin's economically brittle regime than to the West. And for a leader who craves international respect--basking in hosting the G-20 summit last September, sulking in the absence of his peers at the Sochi Olympics--Russia's deepening isolation is a blow.
Last year the Pew Research Center found barely a third of citizens across 38 countries had a favorable view of Russia, compared to the half that saw China favorably and the nearly two-thirds favorable to the United States. Without bonds of amity, every relationship becomes transactional. Now, Putin's tough talk and rough action are only exacerbating the international distaste. Even China, often an ally in the United Nations Security Council, is warning Moscow "not to interfere in others' internal affairs."
The militiamen in Crimea who blocked U.N. envoy Robert Serry's way sent a particularly disquieting signal. The United Nations provides one of the few international mechanisms of ingrained impartiality that can walk everyone back from confrontation.
Presumably a deal can be made. Putin had evinced no interest in Russian control of Crimea so long as the government in Kiev was neutral between East and West, and permanently detaching it from Ukraine tilts the country's electoral balance decisively toward the Russoskeptics. An international accord that guarantees a democratic Ukraine's territorial integrity and bars it from any military alliance, on the Finnish and Austrian model, will likely be at the heart of a resolution. And if Putin decides to proceed with Crimea's incorporation into Russia, he is signing off on NATO membership for Kiev, and other countries can permanently reject visa applications from Crimea or economic transactions with it.
The United States has proved itself essential to mobilizing the political pressures most persuasive to Putin, and Secretary of State John Kerry is managing the diplomacy with admirable firmness and nuance. But this is really a European affair. It is Europe that has the economic leverage that matters to Russia, and Europe whose prosperity Ukrainians want to share. Let Europe lead.
Follow Jeffrey Laurenti on Twitter: www.twitter.com/J_Laurenti

sexta-feira, 7 de março de 2014

Welcome to Cold War II - Dimitri Trenin

Na verdade, a Russia NUNCA deixou de hostilizar o Ocidente. Mas foi o Ocidente que pensou que ela tinha virado boazinha, apenas porque deixou de ser socialista para se tornar "capitalista" (fake, claro).
Isso nos remete a Raymond Aron, sobre a política de poder sendo mais ou menos independente do sistema econômico, ou das condições materiais.
Na verdade, a política de poder é altamente dependente dos líderes políticos e de sua percepção do que seja o país e seus interesses permanentes, ou seja, um pouco de psicologia política, ou o inconsciente social. Dirigentes russos querem sempre se colocar nas botinas de um Ivan, o Grande, ou nos sapatos de Catarina, a terrível (OK, eu sei que era Ivan o Terrível, e Catarina, a Grande, mas a mudança não faz muita diferença; ambos fora totalitários).
O Ocidente se enganou sobre e com a Rússia. O despertar para a dura realidade sempre é decepcionante...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Welcome to Cold War II
OP-ED FOREIGN POLICY

The West and Russia have sailed into uncharted waters. Crimea has de facto declared independence from Kiev. Russia has intervened to effectively secure the new entity without, so far, a shot being fired. The Ukrainian police, security, and military forces on the peninsula have been neutralized, many of them pledging allegiance to the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. In Kiev, the new government talks about Russia's aggression and orders mobilization -- even as it loses control over some of the key cities in the country's east and south. Meanwhile, the West has responded with suspension of preparations for the G-8 summit in Sochi. The U.S. president has talked about Russia paying a high price for its actions, and the U.S. secretary of state has laid out a menu of possible sanctions and other measures.
Thus, the post-Cold War may now be seen, in retrospect, as the inter-Cold War period. The recent developments have effectively put an end to the interregnum of partnership and cooperation between the West and Russia that generally prevailed in the quarter-century after the Cold War. Geopolitically, this period saw a massive reduction of Russian power and influence in Europe and Eurasia, along with the arrival of new states, many of them carved out of the historical Russian Empire. Instead, the United States became the dominant power in Eurasia, and the European Union, while no great power or even a strategic actor itself, turned into an economic magnet for its eastern neighbors. The Russian Federation, the core of the former empire, was essentially left out of the new system, mired in an increasingly awkward, uneasy relationship with the United States and Europe.
The system had been fraying on its eastern edge for almost as long as it had been in existence, but it took a crisis in Ukraine to lead to its clear breakdown. The successful, Western-supported revolution in Kiev in February fatally undermined the delicate balance in the key state between Russia and the West, leading to domestic turmoil in Ukraine. But perhaps more importantly, it also marks the end of Russia's post-Soviet passivity. Make no mistake: Putin's actions in Crimea and the powers he received over the weekend from the Russian parliament -- allowing him to using military force in Ukraine writ large -- return Moscow as an active player in Europe for the first time since 1989.
In 1991, Russia agreed to the dismantlement of its historical empire and accepted the ex-Soviet administrative lines as international borders, which left some 25 million ethnic Russians in the "near abroad." Even if one adds the painful and bloody Chechen wars, this was the most peaceful dissolution of any empire in the 20th century. Russia's "gas wars" with Ukraine, roundly lost by Moscow in Western public opinion, were no more than heavy-handed attempts to make that country pay more for the natural gas it received from Moscow. Even the 2008 war against Georgia was fought by the Russians in response to the Georgian shelling of South Ossetia, which killed Russian peacekeepers deployed there. But all these events, as well as the ramifications they caused vis-à-vis the West, pale compared with what's coming now.
What follows will be "interesting" in the Chinese sense -- i.e., fraught with dangers. The geopolitics of the new Eastern Europe will be fundamentally altered. It will be some time before Ukraine is reconstituted in some new shape -- almost certainly without Crimea -- and with a new structure, probably taking account of its ethnic and cultural complexity, apparent between its western and southeastern regions. The entire former Soviet Black Sea region, from Moldova/Transnistria to Abkhazia/Georgia will look markedly different from how it looks today. Georgia, once deemed too much of a pressure point in the Kremlin's backside, will be back on the fast track for NATO's Membership Action Plan, while Moldova might succumb to instability as the governing pro-EU coalition faces a challenge from pro-Russian opposition. As to Transnistria, it will gravitate to Russian-speaking southeastern Ukraine. Farther north, one can safely forecast pressure building for permanent, if symbolic, U.S. troop deployments in Poland and the Baltic states, as well as for Finland's and Sweden's membership in NATO.
Meanwhile, relations between Russia and NATO will assume a more familiar, adversarial nature. A military standoff in Europe will not be as massive as that during the Cold War, but there will be more certainty than in recent years as to just who is the potential adversary. There would be no need, for example, to talk about Iran when upgrading NATO's missile defenses from bases in Romania and Poland or those at sea. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) could actually be brought back from the closet where it has languished since the end of the Cold War and become a prime venue for Russian-Western security dialogue. Indeed, the recent agreement between Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to use the OSCE to form a contact group with regard to Crimea already points in that direction.
When it comes to Washington, Russia's relations with the United States will eschew any warmth that may still remain. There will be no return to the eyeball-to-eyeball Cold War confrontation, though; on the contrary, the relationship is likely to grow even more distant. Elements of U.S.-Russia cooperation might survive where the two countries' interests clearly meet, but doing anything together in Syria or Iran would become much more difficult. Trade and investment will be restricted as a result of U.S. government sanctions, and the Russian equity market, owned largely by foreigners, will collapse. By contrast, however, EU-Russia trade, worth almost $500 billion a year, will continue by and large, due to economic interdependence between the two.
As Russia's relations with the West deteriorate, its ties with China will need to grow stronger. With more problems in store for Gazprom in the European market, the Russian gas company may have to agree to sell gas to China. Significantly lower prices offered to Beijing would be compensated by the emergence of an alternative market. With Russia likely to be excluded from the G-8, Moscow will have to make more use of the world's remaining global platforms, such as bilateral summits with China or forums with fellow BRICS countries or with Shanghai Cooperation Organization countries. In all these forums, however, Beijing, rather than Moscow, will be the senior power. As a result, Moscow will lose its unique position of being present in all major multilateral organizations, both Western and non-Western.
It's not a pretty picture. Thankfully, some of the worst things of the first Cold War will never likely be resurrected. Officially sanctioned Russian patriotism, even with an anti-American bent, will not be tantamount to a new ideology. The state-dominated capitalism that controls the economy will be more like its more distant czarist -- rather than its immediate communist -- predecessor. Political liberties will continue to be curtailed by an authoritarian government, but personal liberties will remain. Russia will stay mostly open to the outside world, and Russians with some means will continue traveling around the world. The superrich, however, might have to park their assets in Russia -- or stay with those assets, away from Russia. In terms of historical analogies, in other words, the internal situation in Russia would resemble the early 1850s under Emperor Nicholas I rather than the 1950s under Joseph Stalin.
U.S.-Russia geopolitical competition will not be confined to Ukraine, but a string of proxy wars is also not in the offing. However, U.S.-Russia collaboration on Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan will suffer. The United States might use economic sanctions against Russia in an effort, Iran-style, to split the Russian elite and provoke the resentment of ordinary Russian people against their government. Although the static military confrontation is unlikely to be resurrected, nuclear deterrence will be reaffirmed, and competition in the military sphere will spread to other areas, from cyberspace to conventional prompt global strike.
This will be the dawn of a new period, reminiscent in some ways of the Cold War from the 1940s to 1980s. Like with the two world wars, the failure to resolve the issues arising out of the imperfect peace settlement and the failure to fully integrate one of the former antagonists into the new system are leading to a new conflict -- even if a large-scale war will again be safely avoided. This new conflict is unlikely to be as intense as the first Cold War; it may not last nearly as long; and -- crucially -- it will not be the defining conflict of our times.
Yet, it will be for real. Competition between two unequal parties carries additional risks of underestimating the other side or overreacting. Keeping the world safe in the uncertain times ahead will be a bigger challenge than many thought only two weeks ago.

sábado, 1 de março de 2014

Ucrania e o duelo geopolitico EUA-Russia: alguem acredita no Obama? (Le Monde)




La Maison Blanche a affirmé que toute intervention militaire russe en Ukraine aurait un « coût », et agité la menace d'une annulation du sommet du G8 à Sotchi en juin.

Ukraine : Obama met la Russie en garde

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Barack Obama le 28 février à Washington.

Il est très inhabituel de voir Barack Obama un vendredi soir dans la salle de presse de la Maison Blanche. Peu après 17 heures, le président américain est venu au podium délivrer une mise en garde à la Russie. Toute intervention militaire en Ukraine aurait un « coût », a-t-il dit.

M. Obama s'est laissé une marge de manœuvre. Il s'est abstenu de confirmer les informations sur la présence de militaires russes en Crimée, ou d'utiliser le terme d'« invasion ». Mais aussitôt après son intervention, la Maison Blanche a agité la menace d'une annulation du sommet du G8 à Sotchi en juin, si la Russie persistait dans son opération.
C'était la première intervention solennelle de M. Obama depuis la chute du président Ianoukovich. Jusque là, le secrétaire d'Etat John Kerry et le secrétaire à ladéfense Chuck Hagel s'étaient chargés d'appeler la Russie à éviter toute« provocation ».
« INTERFÉRENCE PROFONDE »
« J'ai parlé il y a quelques jours avec le président Poutine et mon administration a été en contact quotidien avec les officiels russes, a rappelé M. Obama. Nous avons clairement dit qu'ils peuvent être partie prenante de l'effort de la communauté internationale pour encourager la stabilité et le succès d'une Ukraine unie, ce qui n'est pas seulement dans l'intérêt du peuple d'Ukraine et de la communauté internationale, mais aussi dans l'intérêt de la Russie. »
Se déclarant « profondément préoccupé » par les informations sur « des mouvements militaires » russes en Ukraine, M. Obama a noté que la Russie a « une relation historique avec l'Ukraine », ainsi qu'une base militaire en Crimée.
« Mais toute violation de la souveraineté et de l'intégrité territoriale de l'Ukraine serait profondément déstabilisatrice, ce qui n'est pas dans l'intérêt de l'Ukraine, de la Russie ou de l'Europe. Cela représenterait une interférence profonde dans des sujets qui doivent être déterminés par les Ukrainiens. Cela constituerait une claire violation de l'engagement de la Russie àrespecter l'indépendance, la souveraineté et les frontières de l'Ukraine, ainsi que du droit international ».
Juste après les Jeux olympiques, a-t-il assuré, une telle action « appellerait la condamnation » internationale. « Et les Etats-Unis seront aux côtés de la communauté internationale pour affirmer que toute intervention militaire en Ukraine aura des coûts », a-t-il promis.
Le président a conclu en indiquant que le vice-président Biden s'était entretenu avec le premier ministre ukrainien pour l'assurer du soutien des Etats-Unis et le féliciterpour sa « retenue »« Nous allons continuer à nous coordonner avec nos alliés européens », a-t-il souligné. Et nous tiendrons la presse et les Américains informés. »

LE SOMMET DU G8 DANS LA BALANCE
Après l'intervention, un haut responsable a expliqué à la presse que le président américain pourrait difficilement participer au G8 de Sotchi si les troupes russes avaient effectivement envahi le voisin ukrainien. Ce qui revient à mettre le sommet dans la balance, les autres occidentaux risquant de s'aligner sur la position des Etats-Unis.
La veille encore, les responsables américains excluaient que M. Obama puisseboycotter le tête-à-tête prévu avec M. Poutine en marge du sommet. L'an dernier, il avait déjà annulé l'entretien, à cause de la position russe sur la Syrie. Même pendant la guerre froide, aucun président américain n'a évité les rencontres prévues plusieurs fois de suite.
Le sénateur républicain John McCain a estimé que Vladimir Poutine cherchait à« rebâtir l'empire soviétique » et que Barack Obama a été « un peu naïf » sur les ambitions du président russe. Regrettant que M. Obama n'ait pas été plus précis sur les « coûts » qui pourraient être infligés à Moscou, il a proposé diverses mesures de rétorsion, telles que la reprise du programme de défense anti-missile en République tchèque, annulée devant l'opposition russe, ou l'accélération de l'intégration de laGéorgie dans l'OTAN.
Le sénateur, qui compte parmi les faucons de Washington, a regretté que M. Obama n'ait pas défendu avec plus de vigueur les « valeurs de base » des Etats-Unis. « Poutine a vu ce qui s'est passé en Syrie quand la ligne rouge devient rose », a-t-il grincé.